DIRTY HABITS

Supply outstrips demand, to put it mildly. Like termite towers, the mound grows skyward. Eventually it collapses into piles that immediately begin enlarging. There used to be a pile near the Arboretum nursery that was twelve-feet high and wide.

We’re talking plastic pots. Mine collect on the landing near my front gate until I take them to Pacific Nursery in Colma, one of the few nurseries that does something with them, or pretends to. Earlier this morning I unloaded my fifty or so into a overflowing dumpster, like a dog owner who puts Fido’s deposits in someone else’s garbage can. Other dumpsters were chockablock with pink 4-inch pots.

I proceeded to acquire more plants, more plastic pots. To spice up a bed of perennials, I bought a flat of bacopa. Sixteen four-inch plants, each in its pink container, each with two plastic tags, one identifying the plant, the other the nursery from which it was purchased. Some had two of each. The identifying tag was six inches long, two inches at its widest, tapered, with a picture of the nuptial-white flower. In addition to cultural information, there was a code number, and in tiny print, patent info with a prohibition against propagation. All for a humdrum plant.

In the “green” section of the dump, interspersed amid leaves, branches, and rotting fruit are hundreds of tags like these. There are plastic bags, flats, and containers too, interspersed amid the greenery. The Jurassic tractor crushes all alike under its wheels.